What are they up to now?

China will protect more nature

Gretchen Daily, biology professor at Stanford University, who received the award in 2012, has helped China to identify places of high ecological importance to establish a series of protected areas. Daily’s research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used eco-mapping software to identify places of high ecological importance for the country.

“It’s a historic moment in the evolution of Chinese civilization. It’s marked by a recognition that the singular focus on mainstream economic growth over the last century has come at a tremendous cost,” said Gretchen Daily to Stanford News.

Ozone layer on the mend

Susan Solomon, a laureate of the Volvo Environment Prize 2009, has published a study in Science that confirms that the chemical ban on CFC’s seem to be working; the void in the ozone layer over the Antarctica is shrinking.

“It´s a big surprise”, says Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “I didn´t think it would be this early”.

Using a combination of measurements from satellites, ground-based instruments, and weather balloons Susan Solomon and her team found that, since 2000, the ozone hole has shrunk by 4 million square kilometers.